


This Digital Age

by justanothersong



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Car Accidents, Coma, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Minor Character Death, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 02:43:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1588700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was four months after the accident that the experimental therapy had begun. The neurologist, an awkward but lovely redhead by the name of Dr. Milton, had explained that while Dean was not in a conscious state, there was significant brain activity happening and there was no injury readily apparent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Digital Age

No matter what anyone thought, it had been an accident. Dean hoped his family understood that. He had been low, true. Hadn’t been the best few years, especially not since Cassie left the two years prior. That had been rough on him, but Dean had understood; she was looking for something that he didn’t have to give, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault.

He had loved her, in his own way. Dean swore that he did. So much so that she knew all of his secrets, even the things he had never told Sam. But it hadn’t been enough, not really. Cassie had wanted his whole heart, and she never seemed to understand that it had been fractured long before she arrived and he’d never been able to pick up the pieces.

It wasn’t even Lisa’s fault. Part of Dean understood why she left, why she never told him about the baby. They had been young, far too young, and Dean would have done the thing his father had raised him to do, asked to marry her, and they would have both been miserable… even more miserable than they became.

Dean set eyes upon his son, Ben, for the first time, and the two-year-old boy’s funeral. Lisa had brought him home to Lawrence to bury him, and word had spread quickly enough. It had been late when Dean had arrived at the little funeral home, sad eyes of Tessa Morton, the undertaker’s daughter that he had known since high school, following him as he ignored the others gathered and walked up the aisle to the little white casket, staring down at the pale little body of the boy who, even in death, had his cheekbones and the same set of his jaw.

It had been a car accident that took the boy, some sort of faulty mechanism in his car seat, something about tension in the seat belt holder. Dean hadn’t listened too closely, concerned only with the little soul he had never known in the tiny box before him. It was that day that he broke, that his heart fractured, and he knew it would never been the same.

 

Then the years had passed. There had been new jobs, new apartments, Cassie. Trying to build a life, pretending there wasn’t some piece of him missing. And then the accident.

It was a cliché, really. Raining night, bald tires. His baby – his beloved Impala – was at Bobby’s shop, waiting for him to finish the rest of her yearly tune-up, so he was driving an old Jeep he had pulled from the scrap yard that seemed good enough for the couple of days he would need it. He hadn’t expected the rain to be that bad, or to wrap the rusted out bucket of bolts around a tree.

But it had been an accident. No matter how low he was, Dean wouldn’t take it that far. He wouldn’t do that to his mother. He hoped they knew, even though there were questions now; he heard Sam, talking quietly to the pretty brunette on his arm – and when had that happened? What had happened to the blonde from California? – wondering if Dean hadn’t just saw the tree and saw an opportunity. 

Much as he wanted to, Dean couldn’t set them straight, even though he heard everything that went on around him and occasionally saw it too, when he would feel light and airy, somehow floating above his body in the hospital bed. It had been a couple of months and he could see the toll it was taking on his body, the way his legs had atrophied from disuse and the way his mouth seemed to hang slack whenever they pulled the tube from his throat to change it.

 

It was four months after the accident that the experimental therapy had begun. The neurologist, an awkward but lovely redhead by the name of Dr. Milton, had explained that while Dean was not in a conscious state, there was significant brain activity happening and there was no injury readily apparent. The hematomas from the accident had healed and the aneurysm that had caused him to flatline in the third month after the accident had been taken care of. There was no medical reason that Dean should not have woken by now, but Dr. Milton had a plan.

Her brother had developed experimental therapy to stimulate greater conscious brain activity in comatose patients, and was experiencing some level of success with another patient in that very hospital. The therapy would provide stimulation to the part of the brain that forms fantasy and imagination, hopefully creating enough electrical activity to wake up the rest of Dean’s senses.

“It’s a harmless therapy that has been showing promising results with our other patient,” Dr. Milton explained. “We know that the creative, imaginative part of the brain is the same area that holds key receptors for memory. If we can… jump start, in a manner of speaking… Dean’s memory, we might be able to bring him out of the comatose state.”

Dean had heard everything, of course. He was there, right there with them. He just couldn’t get his eyes to open or his lips to move, couldn’t get his fingers to twitch to let them known he had heard the plan and he was right on board. The thought occurred to him that he couldn’t quite remember how, and that perhaps Dr. Milton’s therapy might be just what he needed.

 

The ensuing days found Dean drifting; he didn’t know how much time had passed and by the time he was fully aware of his surroundings again, he was in a different room in the hospital. He felt… things… being attached to his head. It wasn’t painful, but he could sense that there was movement there, though he couldn’t react to it. By the discussion going on around him, he gathered that there was something implanted into his brain, at least temporarily. A bit of a scary thought, but he supposed it was for the best.

The chatter, it seemed, was between Dr. Milton and her brother, another Dr. Milton that she referred to often as ‘Gabe’ and only once as ‘Gabriel’. In return, he called her ‘Anna’, and Dean thought the name suited her. Before he could listen in any longer, he felt rather than heard the electrical hum of a machine turning on, and in a moment’s time, the hospital room and its occupants drifted away from him.

 

When he came back to his thoughts, Dean found himself sitting in a park. It was a beautiful day, the sky was sunny and blue, and the grass in the park was greener than any he had ever seen. He could feel the heat of the sun on his shoulders and the way the slight breeze in the air brushed his face and blew through his hair. He could smell the grass, as though it was freshly mown, and the hot salty smell of a pretzel vendor not far off. There were other people milling about and Dean could hear their voices, though the words were indistinct, and after a moment he realized there was a man sitting on the bench beside him.

He was no one that Dean had ever set eyes on before. About the same size as Dean himself, maybe a little shorter, and clad in a rumpled blue suit beneath an equally rumpled overcoat. He had a small paper bag in his hands and he was throwing breadcrumbs from it to a few small ducks that had gathered at his feet. If he noticed that Dean was sitting beside him, he didn’t mention it.

“Hey, buddy, little overdressed for feeding the ducks, huh?” Dean said with half a smile. It was all make believe, after all; couldn’t hurt to make conversation and exercise his atrophied conversation skills.

The man glanced up, seemingly startled, and Dean was met with the bluest pair of eyes he’d ever seen. If it was all being pulled from his own psyche, the only place he could imagine that color had come from was a trip to Boston to see the Royals play at Fenway with his father and brother; they had taken a ferry out onto the open ocean the day before the game, the first time Dean had ever been to the coast, and the summer sky reflected in the water had been gorgeous. It was close, to the man’s eyes, but not quite. Not quite as blue. Not quite as perfect.

“I…” the man started in a gravelly voice, frowning and squinting at Dean. “I… I’m sorry, no one has ever spoken to me here before,” he admitted sheepishly. “My clothes, though… I was on my way home from work. The night of the accident, I mean. This is what I was wearing, I think. I’m not quite sure anymore.”

Dean frowned, then nodded slowly. “Yeah, me too,” he agreed, gesturing to his jeans and the worn t-shirt layered beneath an even more worn flannel. “I mean, I was in an accident too. I think this is what I was wearing then but… well it’s been a while, it’s getting hard to remember.”

The man’s frown deepened a moment, and Dean let his eyes graze over his features; a strong jaw and a gently cleft chin, ruffled dark hair and those wonderful eyes, and plush pink lips that seemed almost swollen or chapped. For a guy, the man was gorgeous.

For a guy.

“Dean,” he offered, holding out his hand for the stranger to shake. “I mean… that’s my name, I’m Dean.”

The man nodded and, after a beat, shook his hand. “Castiel,” he offered in response.

Dean chuckled softly. “Weird name, man,” he said, shaking his head.

The man – Castiel – smile gently in return. “Tell that to my brother Lucifer,” he replied, earning a hearty guffaw from Dean. 

He felt strangely light and… alive. Like he hadn’t felt in months. Like he hadn’t felt in years. Silly, to be so close to death, a living corpse in a hospital bed, strapped to machines with electrodes drilled into his brain, and to feel a happy bubble of laughter escaping his lips.

To feel.

He turned to Castiel, cocking his head to the side. “So tell me something Cas,” he said, watching as the other man’s eyebrows raised in surprise as the shortening of his name. “Are you a computer program or some kind of figment of my imagination?”

The surprise on the other man’s face only grew. “Me?” he asked. “I could ask the same of you. I’m the real one here. I’m in a coma, in a hospital in Kansas City. My brother came up with this computer… thing,” he said, waving his hand in the air as though gesturing towards the machine that Dean himself was hooked up to, “to try and pry me out of a vegetative state. It hasn’t worked so far. I don’t know that it will. But it is far more pleasant than listening to them talk about me and not being able to respond.”

Dean frowned. “No, that’s… I mean, that’s me. I’m the vegetable. Wrapped my car around a tree and been dead in the water in the brainpan ever since.”

“Hmm,” Castiel replied. “Perhaps they updated the program to give me someone to talk to? It’s just been me here, and while it’s been nice, all of these others are just… graphics, or something like it. There’s not been any fully interactive characters as yet, until you.”

“Hey, I’m not a character!” Dean replied, mildly offended. “Seriously, man. My name is Dean Winchester, I’m 33 years old and I live in – lived in – Lawrence. Full time teacher, occasional mechanic. I got a little brother, Sam, and my parents, they all live in Lawrence too… I’m seriously a real live boy here, buddy. If anyone is a computer graphic, it’s you.”

The man smiled faintly. “If you say so, Dean,” he replied, seemingly amused with Dean’s offense. “I suppose I should tell you about me, then? My name is Castiel Milton. I edit textbooks for a living, and I live in Eudora.”

“Doesn’t seem like much of a backstory there, Cas, you sure you’re not a glitch in the program?” Dean teased with a smile. Whoever or whatever the other man was, it was at least giving him someone to talk to for a change.

Castiel gave him a sad smile. “There’s not much else to tell, I’m afraid,” he replied. “I have three brothers and a sister… Anna and Gabe are doctors, and Luce and Michael are lawyers. My parents live in Lawrence, my siblings are in Kansas City. I have a small house and a small car – or, I had a small car, before someone blew a red light and rammed me and my girl into a street light.”

Dean’s eyes lit up. “Your girl?” he asked curiously.

“A 1974 Firebird, cherry red,” Castiel replied with a sigh. “From what I remember of the accident, she’s in pieces now, if not entirely scrapped.”

Dean gaped. His mouth dropped open and went a little dry, or rather, it would have if any of the conversation was anything but a figment of his imagination and external stimulus of a computer. A cherry red ’74 Pontiac Firebird? He knew that car. He knew that it had turned up in pieces in Bobby’s scrap yard, the entire driver’s side sliced through to get the driver out. He remembered the blood on the front seat and the splintered windshield, and remember begging Bobby not to send it to the compactor.

It was going to be a project, fixing her up again. Making her shine for somebody new.

Dean reached into his pocket and found his wallet, flipping past a photo of his mother and the rest of his family, and a single faded snapshot of Ben that Lisa had provided, to pull out an image of his baby.

“1967 Chevy Impala,” he proclaimed proudly. “I was lucky, I guess. I was in a loaner when I skidded in the rain and hit this big ass oak tree head on. She’s still in one piece, so long as my parents haven’t been letting my brother drive her.”

“She’s a beauty,” the man agreed, nodding, and before Dean could retrieve his wallet from the other man’s hands, he had flipped through the images and found that photo of Ben, little Ben who had been lost to Dean even before he had died, and when those perfect eyes raised to his with a questioning glance, Dean began to talk.

 

He talked about Ben, the little boy he never knew. He talked about the few video snippets that Lisa had been able to share, about seeing his bedroom in Lisa’s parents house, all the clothes he would never wear and the toys he could never again play with. He talked about the emptiness inside of him that he could never fill, the overwhelming love for a child he had never known and lost before he even had the chance to hold him.

He talked about his parents, his mother’s grief, not just for Ben but for Dean, for him losing something he never knew he wanted and never knew he could have had.

He talked about Cassie, and how he had loved her, loved her more than he thought he’d ever be able to again, after Ben, and how it hadn’t been enough. How she had started to talk about marriage and babies, and the thought of bringing another child into the world to perhaps lose again someday stopped his heart in his chest and made his stomach hurt.

He talked about Cassie leaving for a job in Chicago, asking him to go with her. He talked about staying behind, about drinking too much, about isolating himself from everyone he cared about, because they would only leave him.

Because he wasn’t good enough. Because he was never good enough, not for his old man, not for Lisa, not for Cassie. 

Not good enough for sweet little Ben.

He talked for hours and days and months in the sweet summer sunshine, alongside the strange man in the trenchcoat, who would listen and nod as he threw his breadcrumbs to ducks that never got full and never ran away. And when Dean had talked enough, when everything dark and dreary that had been drowning him for years was spoken aloud and drifted off into that same sunset, he felt strange.

He felt lighter. Good, even.

And then Castiel began to talk.

He talked about running away from home at seventeen, to marry a girl named Daphne that he had met at church camp. He talked about living in a tiny apartment and struggling to get by, neither of them with even a high school diploma to show for themselves, and Daphne’s family cutting them off without question for her betrayal.

He talked of his mother begging him to come home, to bring his young bride and the child that was on the way, that they would be loved and accepted and have everything they would need if they would just come home.

Castiel talked about going home and his mother throwing her arms around the both of them, crying harder than he’d ever seen in his life and setting them up in the little in-law apartment above the garage. He talked about the baby, Alfie, all bright eyes and blonde hair, full of smile and giggles.

The best thing that ever happened to him, he explained. A father at eighteen and so in love with his life and with the child that he thought his world could never get any better than it was.

He talked about getting his GED and starting college, about taking early morning classes while Daphne cared for Alfie, and taking over in the evenings when she went to school.

Talked about a summer day when the three year old boy wandered away from his tired mother, who was working on homework on the sunny patio to let the boy play outside with the family’s Labrador in the sunshine.  
Talked about arriving at the hospital to a hysterical Daphne and pale-faced hollow-eyed siblings who explained that it had just been too late, that Alfie had been under too long, having wandered out and into the pool while his mother was wrapped up in a particularly difficult calculus problem. About how he had been resuscitated to no avail, his little mind gone before he had a chance to grow up.

Castiel told Dean how he had been broken, how he had felt incomplete. How Daphne had a nervous breakdown and returned to her parents, certain now that the boy’s death had been God’s punishment for disobeying her strict father and running away with the boy that had bewitched her heart.

He talked about trying to work past it, throwing himself into school, even as his family watched him pull away and turn inward. He talked about drinking too much, about meeting a night duty nurse with sticky fingers, who showed him how the right combination of alcohol and pills could make him feel nothing at all. 

He talked about Meg, with her pretty face and her smiling eyes. He talked about finding her overdosed on his bedroom floor, about getting her to the hospital just in time and about finding himself in inpatient treatment for the addictions he had been pretending weren’t really there.

He talked about his life after that, empty and alone, too afraid to let anyone in. Too afraid to let them see how twisted and broken he had become. Too afraid to allow anyone else into the toxic waste dump that was his life, to be touched by the poison he had become.

He talked about feeling broken inside, as though there were pieces missing. And for once in his life, Dean realized he had found someone who understood.

Neither had ever talked about it before, they learned. And they both felt different, lighter and happier, at having spoken the words aloud – such as it was. And then the days inside their little prison of the mind began to change.

 

Some days, they still found themselves at the park, sitting together on their bench and just talking while Castiel fed his ever present ducks. Dean would maybe sit a little closer at times, the imagined breeze in the air getting a little cool on occasion, their chilled fingers finding each other on the wooden seat bench.

Some days they were on that ferry on the water outside of Boston, and Dean was pointing at the gulls sitting happily atop the rough waves and buying them hot chocolate from the onboard vendor.

Some days they were in the cool darkness of a university library, one that Dean had never visited but Castiel swore he had spent many hours in when he had thrown himself into his schooling after Alfie was gone. They sat in the back of the stacks, whispering quietly together and even giggling when the stern-faced librarian passed by, shooting them glares.

Something was happening, Dean knew, that he never expected. He was starting to believe in his digital dream, starting to care for his trenchcoated companion with the strange name and the life story so different but yet somehow so similar to his own.

The therapy, he thought, was going to backfire, because he would be content to stay there, in this place inside his head, with Castiel. Because he felt real here, for the first time in years. He felt whole.

And he told Castiel as much.

 

It was Castiel who brought them to sit atop the Golden Gate bridge. Dean had never been there, but Castiel had visited San Francisco in his youth, and he shared with Dean his memories of the salt air and the fog. They sat together, watching the traffic inching along beneath them, talking about the stunts they would pull when they woke up and got their bodies back.

Bungee jumping, for Castiel. He wanted to know what it would feel like to fly.

For Dean, it would be travel. He was scared half to death of airplanes but there was so much he wanted to see. The Grand Canyon, for one.

“Isn’t that crazy?” Dean said. “Every kid in America’s probably seen it by the time they’re ten, you know? But I never been. And I wanna go.”

Castiel had smiled. “I’ve never seen it,” he admitted, and Dean just shook his head and laughed, because it was all too perfect.

When he kissed Castiel, he swore he could feel it, the dry brush of his chapped lips, the bristle of his scruff against Dean’s cheeks, and that strong hand that reached up to grip at his shoulder and pull him closer. When he finally pulled away, he was out of breath, and he could hear some distant alarm sounding, as though one of the machines he was jacked into was calling all hands on deck, but he didn’t care. Dean pushed the noise away.

He wanted this. He waned to stay here.

Castiel confessed quietly that he’d never been with another man. Had never even thought about it, until now, and Dean admitted the same. 

“I wish I had found you before the accident,” Dean had said quietly. There was part of him that still believed that none of it was real, that Castiel was just a figment of his imagination, drawn up to keep him company in this world the machines had created for him. But there was part of him that wanted – that needed – Castiel to be real, to be another soul trapped in this limbo.

To be someone to come back to.

“If we ever find a way out,” Castiel said slowly. “If we… if we wake up… I want to find you, Dean. The real you, I want… I want to see if your eyes are really that green. I want to map out those freckles with my fingertips, with my real hands.”

Dean had blushed but nodded. “I want that,” he agreed. “Cas, look… whatever happens, we gotta… we gotta promise to find each other, ok? Even if only one of us makes it out. I’ll find you, or you’ll find me. I’ll… I just wanna hold your hand, for real. I want to feel it all, for real. I want… I want the real you.”

Castiel opened his mouth to reply, but his eyes went wide in surprise as the dark fog that had drifted far below their perch atop the bridge began to envelop them both.

“Dean?” he called, the wailing alarm Dean had heard before getting loud again. “Dean!”

 

There were alarms and shouting of orders ringing in Dean’s ears when he opened his mouth, attempting to take great gulping breaths that were prevented by plastic tubes shoved down his throat and into his longs and stomach. 

“Mr. Winchester? Are you with us, Dean?” a woman in a lab coat with short red hair was asking, shining a light into his eyes and attempting to hold his head steady, even while he thrashed in the hospital bed. 

“You have to calm down, Dean, so we can take out the breathing tube,” she was saying, but Dean barely heard, eyes darting around the plan hospital room in search of a familiar face, looking for the man he had somehow left behind.

It took several minutes for the orderlies to restrain him and for the tubes to be pulled, even as he fought them off with a strength his body should not have possessed after so many months of disuse.

“Your family will be here soon, Dean, but you have to calm down,” the woman kept saying, checking his pulse and loosening the wires and tubes leading to his arms, chest and head. “C’mon now, don’t want to panic for them, do we? They’ve been waiting a long time to see you.”

He tried to reply, tried to speak, but the doctor shook her head.

“Your throat is very dry, Dean, don’t try and talk yet. We’ll get some fluids in you and something for the irritation from the tubing, and then you can try, okay?”

Dean kept shaking his head, parched lips parting over and over on a single word that he needed to say, that he needed to speak aloud to make real lest it drifted away from his mind forever and was lost.

“Dean, c’mon now, you need…” the doctor started again, but Dean shook his head violently.

“Castiel!” he finally gasped, and the doctor dropped her pen light, eyes gone wide with surprise.

“What… what did you just say?” she said, voice barely above a whisper. The nurses in the room exchanged glances; they knew the doctor shouldn’t be encouraging Dean to speak at all.

“Castiel,” Dean repeated.

The doctor looked as though she wanted to respond, but an alarm began playing out in the hallway, with a voice over the loudspeaker repeating, “Code Blue, room 422. Dr. Milton to room 422, Code Blue.”

The doctor glanced wilde-eyed at the door and then back to Dean before dropping her penlight and running, leaving the nurses to attend to Dean in her wake.

 

For weeks Dean drifted, sleeping as though he hadn’t been out cold for months on end. His family filed in one by one, and he learned that the brunette on his brother’s arm was named Madison, that they had met during Sam’s internship at a law firm in San Francisco some years before and reconnected over the internet not long after Dean’s accident.

Dean was pretty sure they’d be engaged before the year was out. He ignored the weird looks from Sam when he chatted with Madison about how the fog rolled in along the Golden Gate bridge early in the mornings, simply shrugging when Sam pointed out that Dean had never even been to California.

His parents were there often, his mother almost daily, and Dean felt himself getting stronger. There would be rehab soon, to work the muscles that had wasted away while he was asleep, and after that he would probably need to stay in his parents’ home for a few months, until he could get back on his own feet.

More than anything, he was looking forward to driving; he wished he had taken Cas for a spin in his baby while they were together, but he didn’t voice that to anyone. They had explained away his vivid dreams as part of the therapy he had gone through while asleep, and didn’t want him dwelling on them. It seemed at times his doctor wanted to ask about it, but she refrained as well.

 

Dean had been in a private room for most of his recovery but when the hospital deemed him well enough to have a roommate, they were intent on moving someone in that very day. When Sam commented mildly that the new man, whoever he was, was recovering from a traumatic brain injury much the same as Dean’s, he knew instantly who it was.

They wheeled him in on a gurney, transferring his thin body onto the bed beside Dean’s even as he grumbled about being allowed a wheelchair already, that he was well enough to sit up on his own and tired of being coddled because his sister was the head of the neurology unit at the hospital.

The gravelly velvet voice was one that Dean had heard in his dreams, nightly since he had woken from the coma, and he grinned, waiting for those blue eyes to turn his way. Once then did, his smile grew even wider.

“Hey Cas,” he called.

The man smiled, blue eyes shining. “Hello, Dean.”

~*~

“This is insane. We are insane,” Dean said, shaking his head. It was his thirty-sixth birthday, and he was fairly certain he had lost his mind.

Castiel was grinning, eyes crinkled up in the way they only did when he was truly happy. “You’re not chickening out on me, are you?” he asked.

Dean scoffed, even as the instructor checked the straps on their ankles and waists once again. They stood facing each other, arms wrapped around each other, Dean shivering in the breeze coming off the canyon.

“No way,” Dean replied, shaking his head.

“You two are set to go,” the instructor told them.

Castiel’s grin grew, and he leaned in to press a quick kiss to Dean’s lips. “Count of three?” he suggested.

Dean nodded, and had barely voiced a “One…” before Castiel jumped, spiraling them down into the Grand Canyon, their bungee cord going taut behind them while they both yelled and laughed and kissed in mid-air.

**Author's Note:**

> I am not a neurologist and I have no real life experience with traumatic brain injury, so please take all the medical information in this fic with a grain of salt.
> 
> Follow me on [Tumblr](http://literatec.tumblr.com), if you wish.
> 
> Please do not add this, or any of my posted works, to Goodreads. Thank you.


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